Description:
This painted dressing table en suite with washstand documents the fashion for fancy, or decoratively painted, furniture in the northern Connecticut River Valley. Fancy furniture was an affordable, stylish way to augment an interior, using new colors, motifs, and embellishments on earlier forms of furniture. It was incredibly popular in many areas of the eastern United States from around 1815 to 1840. The dressing table has a stepped arrangement of a long center drawer under two smaller drawers, all with two glass pulls, surmounted by a shaped backsplash with dark-painted trim, with dark-painted rosettes at each end. The legs are turned, and decorated with simple dark-painted circles. The matching wash stand base site on four turned legs, with dark-painted circles and is fitted with a drawer with two glass pulls. The basin has a large backsplash with freehand painted decoration of a garland of fruit and leaves is painted, and a dark-painted border ending in two painted rosettes. Both retain much of their original surface and glass pulls.
The original owners, Warren (1805-1872) and Mary Ann Brown (1812-1901) Leverett, likely acquired this set around the time of their marriage in 1837. Warren graduated from Brown University in 1832, and later studied at Newton Theological Institution. Mary Ann attended the New Hampton Female Seminary before teaching languages and mathematics at the Townsend Female Seminary in West Townsend, Massachusetts. She left this position sometime before October 11, 1837, when she married Warren Leverett. An entry in Warren’s diary records that on September 30, 1837: “Last evening furniture etc. was shipped for N.O. [New Orleans] and Alton [Illinois].” This dressing table and wash stand were part of this shipment. Warren took a position at Shurtleff College in Alton, Illinois, where his identical twin brother, Washington, was a professor. Their papers are now in the Manuscript Collection at The University of Illinois.
Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=HD+2018.30.1 |
